Healthcare Information Technology Project Portfolio Management Review

This assignment analyzes a case study of a Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) project implementation in a large metropolitan hospital system that was conducted without using a portfolio management approach. The project failed due to network inadequacies, leading to service outages and a loss of consumer trust. The assignment highlights the importance of project portfolio management (PPM) in healthcare IT (HIT) projects, emphasizing how PPM can identify and mitigate risks early in the planning phase. It also discusses the benefits of a Portfolio Management Office (PMO) in improving the performance of HIT projects by aligning them with the organization's governance structure. The assignment refers to the use of HIT systems like Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) and consumer health applications to improve healthcare efficiency, patient data management, and reduce medical errors. The conclusion emphasizes that implementing PPM is crucial for the success of HIT projects, especially considering the numerous risks involved.

Running Head: PROJECT PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT
HIT PROJECT PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note

1PROJECT PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT
Question A
Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) Project was implemented without the portfolio
management approach, which was a Health Information technology (HIT) system (Glandon,
Slovensky & Smaltz, 2014). A large metropolitan hospital system’s telecommunication director
wanted to save cost by switching to VOIP model from the traditional phone service and it needed
the existing computer network to provide the digital phone service. Due to the lack of portfolio
management approach the project was not able to overcome the vigorous testing of the existing
computer network. It had failures in the single points of many buildings when the project was
implemented, the network outage to one of the buildings lead to the impact on the overall phone
service of the building. This incident caused a negative effect on the consumer trust and market
value. The computer network was rebuilt using contingency funds to enhance the quality of the
computer system and to retain its customers who were lost during this error. It needed to
completely change its working to provide efficiency and dependency to improve the new digital
phone service (Srivastava & Shainesh, 2015). If portfolio management approach was used here
then the inaccuracy of computer networks could have been identified in the beginning of this
plan and computer network upgrades could have been done in the project plan. The occurrence
of this event proved that project portfolio management is needed to be implemented in a project
plan of an organization as a number of factors are at risk if the project is not successful.
Question B
This chapter focuses on the Health Information Technology systems that are project plans of
many healthcare organizations and the success of such projects are not always at a high. The
efficiency of such project plans can be guaranteed with the help of professional project portfolio
management, it decreases the risk of such huge plans that involves resources. Failure of such

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projects can be a huge loss for the organizations and the target groups involved (Teller, Kock &
Gemünden, 2014). To guarantee more safety in such plans it would be beneficial to identify and
manage the cross project interdependencies, which a portfolio management approach embodies.
This is a secondary step towards safely managing any new project in an organization. Portfolio
Management Office (PMO) in HIT also improves the performance of these projects as it is
collaborated with organization’s HIT governance structure and processes that can provide full
capabilities in the implementation of these projects (Glandon, Slovensky & Smaltz, 2014).
Health Information Technology has been beneficial to health organizations in a number of aspect
due to its efficiency and accuracy in the production of service. Consumers experience easy
accessibility to their medical records and appointments through the help of HIT systems such as
Consumer Health IT applications, Electronic Medical Record Systems (EMRs, EHRs and PHRs)
(Jones et al., 2015). Portfolio management helps in increasing the professionalism of such
systems with HIT governance structures and Program Management helps in managing individual
projects when there are more number of projects needed to be implemented. HIT also helps in
retrieving data and communicating about patient information in an accurate format, and it also
reduces medical errors.

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References
Glandon, G., Slovensky, D., & Smaltz, D. (2014). Information Systems for Healthcare
Management (8th ed., pp. 314-329). Health Administration Press.
Jones, S. S., Rudin, R. S., Perry, T., & Shekelle, P. G. (2014). Health information technology: an
updated systematic review with a focus on meaningful use. Annals of internal
medicine, 160(1), 48-54.
Srivastava, S. C., & Shainesh, G. (2015). Bridging the Service Divide Through Digitally Enabled
Service Innovations: Evidence from Indian Healthcare Service Providers. Mis
Quarterly, 39(1), 245-267.
Teller, J., Kock, A., & Gemünden, H. G. (2014). Risk management in project portfolios is more
than managing project risks: A contingency perspective on risk management. Project
Management Journal, 45(4), 67-80.